Broadway review: NEXT FALL explores love, loss and religion

(Caption: Maddie Corman as Holly, left to right, with Patrick Breen as Adam and Patrick Breusinger as Luke, in the Broadway play Next Fall. Credit:: Carol Rosegg)

NEW YORK - Life can change in a terrible instant. And when it does, the chance to share something important with a loved one, something that you might have been struggling to find the courage to disclose for years, may also evaporate. Touching and amusing but ultimately deeply poignant, Next Fall dramatizes that truth anew with deceptive modesty, elegant wit and honest grief. This powerful new Broadway play, which opened in March at New York's Helen Hayes Theatre, mostly transcends several stereotypes and familiar genres to look at love, life and loss in fresh ways.

(Caption: Maddie Corman as Holly, left to right, with Patrick Breen as Adam and Patrick Breusinger as Luke, in the Broadway play Next Fall. Credit:: Carol Rosegg)

NEW YORK - Life can change in a terrible instant. And when it does, the chance to share something important with a loved one, something that you might have been struggling to find the courage to disclose for years, may also evaporate. Touching and amusing but ultimately deeply poignant, Next Fall dramatizes that truth anew with deceptive modesty, elegant wit and honest grief. This powerful new Broadway play, which opened in March at New York's Helen Hayes Theatre, mostly transcends several stereotypes and familiar genres to look at love, life and loss in fresh ways.

(Caption: Patrick Breen as Adam, left, and Patrick Breusinger as Luke at breakfast in a scene from Next Fall, a Broadway comedy-drama.Credit:: Carol Rosegg)

Beyond that, what makes Next Fall a notable Broadway debut by a promising playwright is its evenhanded look at religion - and more specifically, the way deep divisions over the meaning of life and differing beliefs over the possibility of the afterlife can challenge intimate relationships.

Geoffrey Nauffts' smart and sensitive play revolves around Adam (Patrick Breen) and Luke (Patrick Heusinger), who have been in a pretty happy relationship for four years. The two-act play opens with the blaring sound effects of a car crash as Luke's friends (including Maddie Corman's Holly) wait in a hospital waiting room. Adam (in a convincingly and amusingly neurotic Woody Allen-style performance by Breen) is soon faced with difficult choices to make - about self-disclosure and whether he should make an issue of his relationship and try to have input in a major medical decision. Gradually, as Nauffts seamlessly moves back and forth between a grim and anxious present and a happier past, the history of the relationship between the older Adam and the younger and more handsome Luke becomes clear. While many scenes from the past come across initially as entertaining examples of such familiar genres as the smart urban comedy and the contemporary gay romance, Next Fall has more subtle goals and more serious themes to explore. And the play becomes deeply moving, aided by a wonderful six-member cast in a finely tuned ensemble production that is well-paced and sensitively directed by Sheryl Kaller. While the always realistic dialogue ranges from the witty to the deeply emotional and conflicted, the built-in silences of this play establish a framework for more serious issues and gutwrenching emotions to emerge naturally.

Few modern plays, especially ones reflecting a contemporary urban liberal sensibility, take Christianity seriously or at least treat religion with respect. But Next Fall treats all of its characters and their different views of religion with fairness and compassion. While Adam is an atheist, Luke is a devout Christian. And the issue of their religious differences has popped up with some regularity over the four years of their relationship, since Luke is so guilty about being gay that he prays to God for forgiveness, often after making love. Fearful of losing the love and respect of his stern Christian father (Cotter Smith), Luke has hesitated on the brink of telling the truth to his parents for years. So they don't know he's gay (or have looked the other way) and don't realize that he is in a significant relationship and sharing a New York apartment with his partner Adam. When Luke is hospitalized with major trauma and enters a coma, his parents fly in from the South to take over - and Adam is pushed to the side as just another friend. The situation may be sadly familiar, but deft, nuanced performances and an insightfully written script make it fresh and deeply affecting, especially as other end-of-life issues force difficult decisions on Luke's family, partner and friends. Here the play covers familiar territory of another genre: the medical drama where doctors have reached their limits and the patient's loved ones must somehow cope with inevitable loss. Even a generation ago, when Who's Life is It Anyway? and other similar Broadway plays became disease-of-the-week hits, such dramas already seemed a bit cliched. But of course, cliches become cliches because they reflect universal human situations. And Nauffts in many ways has written a play that updates and reworks familiar themes and genres in ways that deeply touch the heart while also making you laugh.

That's just about my favorite type of play.

IF YOU GO Next Fall continues in an open-ended run at New York's Helen Hayes Theatre, 240 W. 44th St. For tickets, visit www.Telecharge.com For more information, visit www.nextfallbroadway.com